A London-based aid organisation has warned that nomads in the north Indian region of Ladakh are facing destitution as their livestock starve in unusually harsh winter weather.

The director-general of the ApTibet agency, Stewart Sessions, said some nomad communities had already lost up to seventy-five percent of the livestock on which they depend.

He said an appeal for overseas aid had helped to slow down livestock losses, but that more money was urgently needed to pay for fodder and transportation.